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Why Northern Gateway shouldn’t go near Great Bear Rainforest

Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. wants to ship bitumen in supertankers on the B.C. coast. But there’s real risk of a spill in the spectacular Great Bear Rainforest area.

B.C.'s Douglas Channel is a proposed shipping route for oil supertankers carrying bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat on the B.C. coast, from where it would be transported to the United States and Asia. Because of the risk of an oil spill, thee has been an informal moratorium on alloil tanker traffic off the coast since 1972. (DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest as seen from around Borde Island, close to Gil Island and Campania Island on the proposed oil supertanker route, is Canada's only rainforest region and the world's second largest temperate rainforest, about the size of Belgium. (Daniel Beltra photo)

John Honderich, Torstar chair, in B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest region.

BELLA BELLA, B.C.—Sometimes in life you have to witness a place firsthand to really get it.

See it. Experience it. Sense it.

I had watched a video of the channels and byways in western British Columbia that supertankers will ply if the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline is approved. But I decided I wanted to see them up close, then form my own opinion.

So I paid to join a five-day sailing trip through the Great Bear Rainforest region organized by the World Wildlife Federation. To say this region showcases some of the most spectacular scenery that Canada has to offer barely captures it. But more on this later.

I should make it clear, right off the top, that I understand fully Alberta’s desire to sell its oil abroad. It’s the “how” and “where” we must get right.

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My journey turned out to be one of both discovery and surprise, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We began at Kitimat, the endpoint of the proposed bitumen pipeline.

Within minutes of our Gitga’at guide Marven Robinson showing us the likely marine terminal site, three orcas splashed by. Then a pod of seven humpbacks. The oh-so-familiar juxtaposition of trade pitted against the environment was set early, a theme that would haunt throughout.

Certainly the fierce opposition of the Coastal First Nations to the project is well known. For Marven, decked out in his “Stop the Tankers” T-shirt, the feeling is visceral. “This just cannot happen,” he growls.

The first surprise was that the exact tanker route from Kitimat to the ocean is far from direct or straight. Disabuse yourself of any notion there is a wide-open, direct channel to the sea. Indeed, the route twists and turns, offering different options.

It starts at the top of the Douglas Channel, a 70-kilometre fjord with forested mountains plunging to the water on each side. It is about two to three kilometres wide.

Just across from Marven’s village of Hartley Bay, the channel meets Gil Island, 27 kilometres of cliffs and trees that sits smack in the middle of the route. A tanker could pass on either side, but the channel narrows by half. One suddenly remembers that supertankers need at least 500 metres to alter course.

(It was the northern tip of Gil where the B.C. ferry, Queen of the North, sank after running aground in 2006. It missed a turn, ran onto the rocks, and now lies 440 metres beneath the surface. Marven and his fellow Gitga’at villagers were the ones who averted total disaster by rushing to the scene, saving all but two passengers.)

Once you pass Gil, the route skirts Campania Island before entering the often wild Caamano Sound. Its chart shows a splash of rocks, shoals and shallow water. While there is definitely an open route to the ocean, there is little room for error.

Certainly water depth is not an issue. Virtually the entire channel is hundreds of metres deep. And Northern Gateway proponents can justifiably argue that vessels have been carting industrial products up and down the same channel to Kitimat for decades.

But a modern supertanker — roughly six to seven times the size of a typical ore carrier — has never plied these waters. And losing a load of bauxite or aluminum is a far cry from a supertanker disgorging millions of litres of molasses-like bitumen.

The next variable is the weather. For my trip, the sun shone brilliantly and visibility was unlimited. Yet the area is legendary for its deep fog, gale-force winds, wild storms and rockslides. No one disputes the severity of the climate. Enbridge, the pipeline’s owner, says it has a foolproof plan to manage all this. Needless to say, that claim has provoked controversy.

Another major surprise — certainly news to me — was that there has been an informal moratorium on all oil tanker traffic off the coast of B.C. since 1972.

The reason? Fear of a massive and damaging oil spill. For almost four decades that has been federal government policy. Periodic reviews have been held, but each study has come to the same conclusion: the risk of a tanker spill is still too high.

But in 2009 the Harper government declared there was no moratorium, saying nothing formal had ever been enacted. Yet the following year, federal environmental watchdog Scott Vaughan wrote a scathing report saying, “I am troubled that the government is not ready to respond to a major spill.”

Thus it is probably not a surprise that the House of Commons subsequently passed a non-binding resolution banning tanker traffic again.

There is certainly no evidence of any emergency infrastructure these days. The Coast Guard is based in Prince Rupert, some 135 kilometres northwest of Gil Island. Even if it were closer, I was mindful of what Vaughan wrote just two years ago. “We found that Canada’s Coast Guard national emergency plan is out-of-date and the organization has not fully assessed its response capacity in over a decade.”

That, in itself, should give everyone huge pause for concern. On its website, Enbridge outlines in detail what steps it would take to prevent any spill. However, what capacity, governmental or otherwise, is there in place now to handle an emergency? Again, we saw none.

That leads to the third and final surprise.

The proposed tanker route cuts right through Canada’s one and only rainforest region. Again, this fact had escaped me; I have always thought of the Amazon or Congo when the word rainforest is mentioned.

Yet this particular slice of British Columbia houses the world’s second largest temperate rainforest, about the size of Belgium. It is called the Great Bear Rainforest because of the spectacular population of black, grizzly and kermode bears that live off the abundant salmon runs.

It is wild but not a wilderness. The region supports about 10,000 direct jobs — mostly harvesting its resources — and 20,000 indirect jobs. In a landmark agreement six years ago spearheaded by both Ottawa and B.C, all stakeholders came together to sign a master plan on how the region could be used. At the time, then federal environment minister John Baird called the Great Bear “an area of extraordinary ecological significance.”

The agreement is still trumpeted today as a major achievement that balanced legitimate economic development against the delicate ecology of the area. Yet to the Coastal First Nations and many others, the proposed supertanker route is a fundamental betrayal of the spirit of that agreement. The Gitga’at are one of the 12 Coastal First Nations whose rights to this land have never been ceded or relinquished.

They view the Great Bear as an ecological treasure. Having now seen it up close, so do I.

It is a unique place where ocean, salmon rivers and coastal rainforest exist in one dramatic landscape that takes your breath away. It is also one of the richest and most productive ecosystems on the planet, all based on the salmon.

The Great Bear Sea is the critical habitat for 17 types of marine mammals, including the endangered blue, fin, right, sei and orca whales. Both the Skeena and Nass Rivers, critical for 60 per cent of B.C.’s multi-million-dollar salmon catch, run through the region.

And when you visit the Great Bear, you learn how interdependent and connected the entire eco-system is. It is all based around the salmon, which provide food for the bears, the bald eagles, the gulls, and then nutrients for the surrounding rainforest. Stop the salmon and the entire system would implode.

As an aside, one of the extraordinary highlights was seeing the spirit bear, a member of the black bear family with a recessive gene that turns the bear’s fur a brilliant creamy white. There are only a few hundred on the planet and they only live in the Great Bear.

In its entirety, this is what would be at stake if there was ever a massive oil spill. And the “oil” these tankers would be carrying would not be traditional crude or refined petroleum. It would be the heavier bitumen from the tar sands. Once spilled, diluted bitumen separates into a toxic gas, which can linger for days, and then into particles. Since the bitumen is so heavy, it could easily spread from the surface right to the bottom. And it could also disperse throughout the channels of the region.

Nowhere can I find or read about any existing technology to effectively clean up bitumen. This may be one major reason why B.C. newspaper mogul David Black has proposed the pipeline go instead to Prince Rupert, thereby bypassing the Great Bear, and that the bitumen be refined in Canada before going into these supertankers.

There is obviously a very good reason we have had a longstanding ban on tanker traffic along the B.C coast. The risk is simply too high. And surely it would be folly to make such a critical decision on the basis that a bitumen spill would never happen.

So why would we put the Great Bear at risk?

Having now seen it up close, I don’t get it. It seems like sheer folly.

And finally, what is our responsibility to future generations of Canadians for this unique region?

I can do no better than return to the words of the same minister Baird, whose government is now pushing Northern Gateway, when speaking previously about the Great Bear. “Canadians feel a duty and an obligation to protect future generations so that they can enjoy the sight of these ecological treasures.”

To which I can only add — Amen!

The final decision on building the Northern Gateway pipeline will be made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but not until thousands of Canadians have had their say.

Public hearings are currently being held on the $6-billion project, which would see 500,000 barrels a day of oil sands-derived crude carried from Alberta to Kitimat on the B.C. coast. There, supertankers would export the crude to Asia and the United States.

Calgary-based energy giant Enbridge Inc. wants to build the 1,172-kilometre-long pipeline, but the proposal has unleashed an outpouring of opposition because it would pass through some of the continent’s most pristine wilderness areas.

The hearings on the controversial project are expected to continue for months. Once they wrap up, the National Energy Board-led panel will deliver a yes-or-no recommendation to the federal cabinet by the end of 2013. The Harper cabinet will then have the final word on whether the pipeline should go ahead — even if the panel determines that the project is environmentally unsound.

Opponents of the pipeline include B.C. municipalities, environmental groups, aboriginals and residents along the project’s planned route.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark has assailed the project, saying the province is taking a disproportionate amount of any risk, and has threatened to block construction unless B.C. gets a bigger portion of pipeline revenues.

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